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Sunday, July 22, 2012

New Edition Includes 39 Different Farewells To 'Arms'

Comprofessor.com note: In high school I was part of a team that read through the high school writings of young Enest Hemmingway and published a 100th anniversary of Oak Park-River Forest High School special edition of our newspaper, Trapeze, composed 100% of Hemmingways writings as a teenager.

by NPR Staff

EnlargeCourtesy of APErnest Hemingway first published A Farewell to Arms in 1929.

Ernest Hemingway began his second novel, A Farewell to Arms,
in 1928. He says, in an introduction to a later edition, that while he
was writing the first draft his second son was born, and while he was
rewriting the book, his father committed suicide. He goes on to say,
with his famous economy, "I was not quite thirty years old when I
finished the book and the day it was published was the day the stock
market crashed."

Now we have a new edition of A Farewell to Arms,
the great novel of World War I. And for the first time in print, it
includes all the endings to the story that that Hemingway considered —
and there were a lot of them. In 1958, Hemingway told The Paris Review that he rewrote the ending 39 times before he was satisfied.

The
new edition also comes with an introduction by the writer's grandson,
Sean Hemingway, who tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer that he found a
whopping 47 alternative endings hidden away in his grandfather's papers.
"Which pretty much bears out — depending on your definition of an
ending, since some of them are fragments — his statement," he says.

Spoilers ahead if you're one of the people who have not read it yet: Arms
tells the story of an American man who volunteers as an ambulance
driver in Italy during the war and falls in love with a beautiful
English nurse who dies, tragically, in childbirth after the couple
escape to Switzerland together. The ending, famously, leaves readers in
tears — but what alternatives did Hemingway consider?

"I
like the live-baby ending, the ending in which you consider that the
baby lives," Hemingway says. "And it's interesting that my uncle
Patrick's birth was the grist for the creation of the novel, because he
was born exactly at the time my grandfather was writing the book. And of
course, he did live, but my grandmother had a very difficult birth."

The
alternative endings help readers see Ernest Hemingway's thought
processes — but they were never going to be real. Hemingway himself
wrote, in a 1948 introduction to the book, that he always knew it would
be tragic. "To my mind, in looking at all the different endings, the one
that he did settle on is the most powerful," his grandson says.

Sean Hemingway, grandson of the famous novelist, authored an introduction to the new edition of Ernest Hemingway's classic A Farewell to Arms.

Hemingway was famous for his spare, declarative
style. Sean Hemingway says his grandfather operated on the principle of
the iceberg: "for the part that shows, there's seven-eighths more
underwater," he says. "In many ways, I think this example of the ending
of A Farewell to Arms is really perhaps the best and the finest
example of this in his writing, where you can really see all the
endings and how he worked towards this final ending, which although it's
really short ... you see all the emotion that he put into it, and that
he left out in the end, but it's still there, sort of under the
surface."

Hemingway says he first read his
grandfather's book as an exchange student in Italy. And while he can't
remember his initial reaction to it, he says subsequent rereadings
packed a powerful punch. "It gets me every time I read it," he says.
"It's that moment of realization, which doesn't hit, you're almost in
shock, when a person actually dies, but when it hits you, and that's the
moment he ends with, and I think it's so powerful, and it does bring me
to tears when I read it."

About Me

Actor, Casting Director, Director, Broadcaster, Writer, Singer, Artistic
Director, Dramatur, Producer, Professor, Coach, Husband, Grandfather, Marketing
Professional and life long student Art Lynch joined the staff of John Robert
Powers in 1999. Lynch is also an adjunct professor at the Community College of
Southern Nevada, the Morning Edition Weekend Host for Nevada Public Radio and
one of 67 individuals who represent 126,000 actors as a member of the Board of
Directors of the Screen Actors Guild. He is the past president of the Nevada
Branch of the Screen Actors Guild and of the Professional Audio/Visual Communications
Association. A resident of Nevada since 1984, Lynch has an MA in Communications
from UNLV and a BA in Theater, Speech and Mass Communications from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently pursuing post-graduate studies
in theater, education and the entertainment industry. Art Lynch studied and
practiced the craft of acting in Chicago and California before settling in
Nevada. With his wife Laura, Art owned and operated a successful marketing
company with national clientele. Art was personally responsible for casting and
directing over 1,000 commercials and industrials, as well as assisting on film
and television projects in many ways. His career also includes earning awards
as a wire service, magazine and broadcast journalist. He is most proud,
however, of his daughters. Ann is a PhD in neuroscience and Beth is the proud
mother of his grandchildren, Evan and Elijah.

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